Thread: My while (true) loop method only seems to run once!

Hi guys,

I've recently written a block of code to serve as an internal integer-based clock for another program I'm using.

public class WorldTime
{
    public String gametime;
    final int sunrise = 600;
    final int sunset = 1800;
    public int timevalue = 0;
    public Boolean isnight;
    public Boolean isday;
    public Boolean issunrise;
    public Boolean issunset;
    public Boolean runclock;
 
    public int currentTime()
    {
        while (true)
        {
 
            try 
            {
                Thread.sleep(1000);
            }
 
            catch (InterruptedException timevalue)
            {
 
            }
 
            if (timevalue == 2400)
            {
                resetTime();
            }
 
            else
            {
                timevalue++;
            }
 
           return timevalue;
        }
    }

There are a lot more other methods in the class, but this is the only one I'm interested in for this question.

Now, to test that this counting system is working, I created a dummy program to merely test to method value to see if this method was working.

public class TimeTest 
{
    public static int cool;
 
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        WorldTime base = new WorldTime();
        cool = base.currentTime();
        testRun();
    }
 
    public static void testRun()
    {
        Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);
        int x = scan.nextInt();
 
        int y = new WorldTime().currentTime();
 
        if (x > 0)
        {
            try 
            {
                Thread.sleep(5000);
            }
 
            catch (InterruptedException timevalue)
            {
 
            }
 
            System.out.println("The program's time is: " + cool);
        }
    }
}

The code compiles easily.

I have it sleep for 5 seconds to see if the counting method works. However, the output is always "1", regardless of how long the sleep value is, or how long I wait to input an x value.

What's going on here? I'm not exactly a java expert, but I have enough experience writing code that I thought this should work.

Thanks in advance!

You return a value in your loop. Whenever you return something, all of the execution afterwards is ignored.